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PepsiCo, the planetary purveyor of sugary drinks, greasy chips, and (weirdly) oatmeal, hummus, and gazpacho(?) is partnering with Beyond Meat, the publicly traded plant-based protein provider, on a poorly named joint venture to hawk new plant-based food and beverages to consumers.
The PLANeT Partnership (which was clearly branded by the same genius behind the comic sans font), will combine Beyond Meat’s skills with protein prestidigitation and PepsiCo’s marketing and manufacturing savvy to flood the global market with new snacks and drinks, the two companies said.
Neither company disclosed any financial terms and other pesky details around who, what, where, and when, except to say that the the joint venture operations will be managed through the newly created PLANeT Partnership.
(If the companies put as much effort into running the business as they did with naming and branding it, Impossible Foods shouldn’t have much to worry about…. The capitalization and branding of this thing is an affront to the English language is all I’m saying.)
“Plant-based proteins represent an exciting growth opportunity for us, a new frontier in our efforts to build a more sustainable food system and be a positive force for people and the planet, while meeting consumer demand for an expanded portfolio of more nutritious products,” said Ram Krishnan, PepsiCo Global Chief Commercial Officer, in a statement.
In the announcement touting the new JV, PepsiCo referred to its storied history of snack innovation including baked LAY’S chips, Sabra Snack Cups, Alvalle ready-to-drink gazpacho, Quaker Breakfast flats and Gatorade Juiced.
The company has also acquired BFY Brands, which makes PopCorners; SodaStream, which makes… well… SodaStreams… and BareSnacks, which makes baked fruit and vegetable chips.
The deal is the latest really really big partnership for Beyond Meat and follows an oddly botched announcement with McDonald’s that the two companies would be collaborating on new menu items.
Remember the app audit Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg promised to carry out a little under three years ago at the height of the Cambridge Analytica scandal? Actually the tech giant is very keen that you don’t.
The UK’s information commissioner just told a parliamentary subcommittee on online harms and disinformation that a secret arrangement between her office and Facebook prevents her from publicly answering whether or not Facebook contacted the ICO about completing a much-trumpeted ‘app audit’.
“I think I could answer that question with you and the committee in private,” information commissioner Elizabeth Denham told questioner, Kevin Brennan, MP.
Pressed on responding, then and there, on the question of whether Facebook ever notified the regulator about completing the app audit — with Brennan pointing out “after all it was a commitment Mark Zuckerberg gave in the public domain before a US Senate committee” — Denham referred directly to a private arrangement with Facebook which she suggested prevented her from discussing such details in public.
“It’s part of an agreement that we struck with Facebook,” she told the committee. “In terms of our litigation against Facebook. So there is an agreement that’s not in the public domain and that’s why I would prefer to discuss this in private.”
The UK Information Commissioner has previously passed information to FB re: Cambridge Analytica, and has a secret legal settlement w/ them
This will be a worry to anyone who has passed information to them (e.g. whistleblowers)
Long term this practice will have chilling effects https://t.co/an7dgnZADY
— Paul-Olivier Dehaye (@podehaye) January 26, 2021
In October 2019 Facebook settled with the UK’s data protection watchdog — agreeing to pay in full a £500,000 penalty announced by the ICO in 2018 in relation to the Cambridge Analytica breach but which Facebook had been appealing.
When it settled with the ICO Facebook did not admit liability. It had earlier secured a win, from a first-tier legal tribunal that had held June that “procedural fairness and allegations of bias” against the regulator should be considered as part of its appeal, so its litigation against Facebook had got off to a bad start — likely providing the impetus for the ICO to settle with Facebook’s private army of in-house lawyers.
In a statement at the time, covering the bare bones of the settlement, the ICO said Denham considered the agreement “best serves the interests of all UK data subjects who are Facebook users”.
There was no mention of any ‘gagging clauses’ in that disclosure. But the regulator did note that the terms of the agreement gave Facebook permission to “retain documents disclosed by the ICO during the appeal for other purposes, including furthering its own investigation into issues around Cambridge Analytica”.
So — at a stroke — Facebook gained control of a whole lot of strategically important information.
The settlement looks to have been extremely convenient for Facebook. Not only was it fantastically cheap (Facebook paid $5BN to settle with the FTC in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal just a short while later); and not only did it provide Facebook with a trove of ICO-obtained data to do its own digging into Cambridge Analytica safely out of the public eye; but it also ensured the UK regulator would be restricted in what it could say publicly.
To the point where the information commissioner has refused to say anything about Facebook’s post-Cambridge Analytica app audit in public.
The ICO seized a massive trove of data from the disgraced (and since defunct) company which had become such a thorn in Facebook’s side, after raidingCambridge Analytica’s UK offices in early 2018. How much of that data ended up with Facebook via the ICO settlement is unclear.
Interestingly, the ICO also never produced a final report on its Cambridge Analytica investigation.
Instead it sent a letter to the DCMS committee last year — in which it set out a number of conclusions, confirming its view that the umbrella of companies of which CA was a part had been aggregating datasets from commercial sources to try to “make predictions on personal data for political alliance purposes”, as it put it; also confirming the improperly obtained Facebook data had been incorporated into a pre-existing database containing “voter file, demographic and consumer data for US individuals”.
The ICO also said then that its investigation did not find evidence of the Facebook data that had been sold to Cambridge Analytica had been used for political campaigning associated with the UK’s Brexit Referendum. But there was no overarching report detailing the underlying workings via which the regulator got to its conclusions.
So, again from Facebook’s perspective, a pretty convenient outcome.
Asked today by the DCMS committee why the regulator had not produced the expected final report on Cambridge Analytica, Denham pointed to a number of other reports it put out over the course of the multi-year probe, such as audits of UK political parties and an investigation into credit reporting agencies.
“The letter was extensive,” she also argued. “My office produced three reports on the investigation into the misuse of data in political campaigning. So we had a policy report and we had two enforcement reports. So we had looked at the entire ecosystem of data sharing and campaigning… and the strands of that investigation are reported out sufficiently, in my view, in all of our work.”
“Taken together the letter, which was our final line on the report, with the policy and the enforcement actions, prosecutions, fines, stop processing orders, we had done a lot of work in this space — and what’s important here is that we have really pulled back the curtain on the use of data in democracy which has been taken up by… many organizations and parliamentarians around the world,” she added.
Denham also confirmed to the committee that the ICO has retained data related to the Cambridge Analytica investigation — which could be of potential use to other investigations still ongoing around the world. But she denied that her office had been asked by the US Senate Intelligence Committee to provide it with information obtained from Cambridge Analytica — seemingly contradicting an earlier report by the US committee that suggested it had been unable to obtain sought for information. (We’ve contacted the committee to ask about this.)
Denham did say evidence obtained from Cambridge Analytica was shared with the FTC, SEC and with states attorneys general, though.
We’ve also reached out to Facebook about its private arrangement with the ICO, and to ask again about the status of its post-Cambridge Analytica ‘app audit’. (And will update this report with any response.)
The company has produced periodic updates about the audit’s progress, saying in May 2018 that around 200 apps had been suspended as a result of the internal probe, for example.
Then in August 2019 Facebook also claimed to the DCMS committee that the app audit was “ongoing”.
In its original audit pledge — in March 2018 — Zuckerberg promised a root and branch investigation into any other ‘sketchy’ apps operating on Facebook’s platform, responding in a ‘crisis’ length Facebook post to the revelations that a third party had illicitly obtained data on millions of users with the aim of building psychographic profiles for voter targeting. It later turned out that an app developer, operating freely on Facebook’s platform under existing developer policies, had sold user data to Cambridge Analytica.
“We will investigate all apps that had access to large amounts of information before we changed our platform to dramatically reduce data access in 2014, and we will conduct a full audit of any app with suspicious activity,” Zuckerberg wrote at the time. “We will ban any developer from our platform that does not agree to a thorough audit. And if we find developers that misused personally identifiable information, we will ban them and tell everyone affected by those apps. That includes people whose data [Aleksandr] Kogan misused here as well.”
It’s notable that the Facebook founder did not promise to transparently and publicly report audit findings. This is of course what ‘self regulation’ looks like. Invisible final ‘audit’ reports.
An ‘audit’ that’s entirely controlled by an entity deeply implicated in core elements of what’s being scrutinized obviously isn’t worth the paper it’s (not) written on. But, in Facebook’s case, this opened-but-never-closed ‘app audit’ appears to have served its crisis PR purpose.
TiVo devices are getting new voice recognition capabilities thanks to a partnership with the Atlanta-based startup Pindrop, which is now offering its voice recognition and personalization technologies for consumer devices.
The new voice recognition capabilities replace TiVo’s discontinued use of the Alexa voice recognition service, which happened with little fanfare last year.
TiVo made a big push with its Alexa integration a little over two years ago, but the switch to Pindrop’s services shows that there’s a robust market for voice-enabled services and providers are moving from different markets to compete on Amazon and Google’s home turf.
Through the integration with Pindrop’s services, TiVo homeowners will now be able to search for shows and control their devices using their voice. But Pindrop’s tech, which was developed initially as an anti-fraud technology for financial services firms and big business customers, goes beyond basic voice recognition.
Pindrop’s tech can tell the difference between different speakers, setting up opportunities for the personalization of programming with each user being able to call up their individual account for Netflix, Amazon or other services with simple voice commands.
“Beyond just understanding what was said, we want to understand the context of the situation to drive intelligent system behavior in the moment,” said Jon Heim, Senior Director of Product & Conversation Services at TiVo. “The ability to distinguish between different members of a household based on their voice is an example of this contextual awareness, enabling us to provide an unprecedented level of personalization through an experience tailored to that specific person.”
It’s cool.
When different users say the “What should I watch?” prompt, TiVo devices can now pull up personalized content they are most likely to want to watch. If another member of the household says the same command, the device will display different results.
The technology requires user opt-in, and while Pindrop’s tech can differentiate between speakers, the identity of the speaker is anonymized.
It’s a service that Pindrop has already rolled out to eight of the ten largest banks in the U.S., according to Pindrop co-founder and chief executive Vijay Balasubramanian. And the foray into consumer devices through the TiVo partnership is just the beginning.
The company has also integrated with SEI Robotics devices, the white label manufacturer of Android devices.
Pindrop has plenty of cash in the bank to finance its push into the world of consumer devices. The company’s profitable and is looking at an annual run rate just shy of $100 million, according to Balasubramanian.
For its next trick, the company intends to roll out its voice recognition service in cars and other networked consumer devices, according to Balasubramanian.
“[We’re] working with OEMS for auto… they’re in the proof of concept phase,” he said.
Automating and controlling devices and energy usage in homes has potentially become a bit easier thanks to an integration between Span, the startup making a digital fusebox replacement, and Amazon’s voice recognition interface, Alexa.
The integration also comes with a $20 million new cash infusion from Amazon’s Alexa Fund and the massive insurance company Munich Re Ventures’ HSB Fund.
Through the Alexa integration, homeowners using Span’s electrical panels can turn on or off any circuit or appliance in their home, monitor which appliances are using power, and determine which electrical source is generating the most power for a home.
Questions like “Alexa, ask Span what is consuming the most power right now?” will get a response. The Alexa integration opens up new opportunities for home owners to integrate their devices and appliances, because of the connection to the home’s wiring, according to Span chief executive, Arch Rao.
Rao sees the Alexa integration as a way for Span to become the home automation hub that tech companies have been promising for a long time. “There are far too many devices in the hoe today… with too many apps,” Rao said. “The advantage we have is, once installed, we’re persistent in the home and connected to everything electric in the home for the next 30 to 40 years.”
In addition to monitoring energy usage and output, Alexa commands could turn off the power for any device or switch that a homeowner has programmed into the system.
“The most material way to state it is, our panel is providing a virtual interface to the home in the build environment,” said Rao. “We’re building a very capable edge device… it becomes sort of a true aggregation point and nerve center to give you real-time visibility and control.”
Going forward, Rao envisions Span integrating with other devices like water sensors, fire alarm sensors, and other equipment to provide other types of controls that could be useful for insurers like Munich Re.
With the $20 million that the company raised, Rao intends to significantly increase sales and marketing efforts working through partners like Munich Re and Amazon to get Span’s devices into as many homes as possible.
The company has significant tailwinds thanks to home automation and energy efficiency upgrade efforts that are now wending their way through Washington, but could mean subsidies for the deployment of technology’s like Span’s electric panels.
Rao also intends to boost headcount at Span. The company currently has 35 employees and Rao would like to see that number double to roughly 70 by the end of the year.
Span’s growth is part of a broad movement in home technologies toward increasingly sustainable options. In many cases that’s the penetration of electrical appliances in things like water heaters and stove tops, but also the integration of electric vehicle charging stations, home energy storage units, and other devices that push energy generation and management to the edge of electricity grids.
“It’s cutting that pipe that’s bringing natural gas to the home and bringing all electric everything… as consumers are continuing to cut the cord on fossils, your existing home system is not efficient. That’s one ecosystem of products where we are starting to see partnership opportunities,” Rao said. “When it comes to applications like monitoring the health of your appliances… and services to the home. Having the data that we provide will be unprecedented.”
5G is the current revolution in wireless technology, and every chip company old and new is trying to burrow their way into this ultra-competitive — but extremely lucrative — market. One of the most interesting new players in the space is EdgeQ, a startup with a strong technical pedigree via Qualcomm that we covered last year after it raised a nearly $40 million Series A.
The company has been quite stealthy about its technology as it works on its design (its website as I write this literally says “Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!”), but today, the company revealed more details for the first time (and presumably also updated its website).
The most interesting facet of its system-on-a-chip (SoC) design is that it is based on RISC-V. Unlike processor architectures like x86 and Arm, RISC-V is open-source, and one of the first open architectures to reach any sort of enduring popularity and ecosystem. That’s led to a bunch of new companies building on top of it, including now EdgeQ and also SiFive, which we covered late last year.
Vinay Ravuri, EdgeQ’s founder and CEO, explained that the use of RISC-V allows EdgeQ to offer chips with the flexibility of reprogrammable processors known as FPGAs while also offering a more cohesive and integrated product with better power savings. In his view, that’s been one of the big challenges in the wireless communications market to date with the rollout of 5G.
“When you are in a closed system, it compacts nicely, and everything matches,” he said, pointing to market leaders like Huawei and Ericsson whose vertically-integrated base stations are widely deployed throughout the world. The problem is that customers feel stifled by having all of their equipment come from one, irreplaceable vendor. Meanwhile, with a purely open system based on standards like OpenRAN, “you get a clunky solution” that’s cobbled together from off-the-shelf parts. That leads to increased power consumption since the components in these boxes were never faithfully designed to be used together.
Ravuri says that EdgeQ stands in the middle between open and closed, offering an extensible system that is also integrated and may save, in some instances, up to 50% of the power demand for a wireless base station. The key is combining machine learning into wireless communications through a better SoC and having all the parts work seamlessly together. “The uniqueness of the communications chips is in the algorithms,” he said. “You are not selling sand, you are not connecting gates and saying this is a processor. You are connecting gates and here is an algorithm for the physical layer of communications.”
EdgeQ founder and CEO Vinay Ravuri. Photo via EdgeQ.
Adil Kidwai, who is VP and head of product at EdgeQ, said that “Under the hood, it is hardware instructions that are controlled by software … It’s a ‘soft’ modem with very low power consumption.” Since EdgeQ is based on RISC-V, the existing toolchain available in that ecosystem also applies to the company’s product, allowing engineers to use compilers and debuggers that have been built for RISC-V. Ravuri noted that EdgeQ has added about 50 to 100 of its own vector extensions to the base RISC-V implementation to optimize performance.
With the product’s design more firmly established, he said that the company is looking to sample its system with customers in the first half of this year. “Once we sample, there is a productization cycle that customers take,” he said, and he intends to be starting revenue growth by 2022. The EdgeQ base station is compatible according to the company with OpenRAN option 7.x and option 6.
The company also noted for the first time today that Paul Jacobs, the former CEO of Qualcomm, and Matt Grob, the company’s former CTO, have both joined EdgeQ’s advisory board in an official capacity. The two met Ravuri back when he was at Qualcomm and have been in touch throughout EdgeQ’s development.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/26/edgeq-reveals-more-details-behind-its-next-gen-5g-ai-chip/
